The famous fitness guru isn’t missing — he is just taking much-needed “time for himself,” his older brother said in a new interview.

Lenny Simmons said the “Sweatin’ to the Oldies” instructor is enjoying some R&R away from the limelight, amid mounting rumors that he’s gone AWOL.

“I would just hope people [can] be a little bit more respectful and realize that he’s worked hard and he still loves people — but he needs some time for himself,” Lenny told ET Tuesday.

Lenny insisted he talked to Richard last Sunday, as he does every week, and that he’s “doing great.”

“He was asking about our renovations to our home. And we had just gone to see the Broadway musical ‘Beautiful,’” Lenny said. “We talk every Sunday. He calls me and we have a great conversation and then he talks to my wife. He probably talks to my wife longer than he talks to me.”

The frizzy-haired aerobics expert, 68, hasn’t been seen in public in more than three years, sparking rumors that he’s missing — or being held hostage in his Los Angeles home by a housekeeper.

But Lenny insisted the housekeeper, Teresa Reveles, is a “very lovely lady.”

“She has been a good friend of my brother for over 20 some-odd years,” he said. “It stresses me to hear that people think that she is holding him hostage or that she is mean. She isn’t. She is a very nice person.”

Simmons’ longtime friend and former masseuse Mauro Oliveira made the hostage-taking accusation in a popular podcast by Dan Taberski.

Simmons’ rep, Tom Estey, told Us Weekly that the accusation is a “complete load of crap.”

Last year, Simmons told ET that rumors of his disappearance were “very hurtful” and insisted he was just taking it easy following a knee replacement.

“I am not kidnapped,” Richard said by phone. “No one should be worried about me … The people that surround me are wonderful people who take great care of me.”